New website proving a hit!

The new website is really proving a hit. Yesterday I sent out an email to all my customers (those subscribed to receive communications from me). The email just informed everyone that I have a new website up and running. There were a lot of customers, unfortunately too many for the system to cope with. It crashed and I suddenly ended up with over 200 undelivered email returns - oops! I am not sure exactly how many were received but I'm guessing a large number as I quickly had several new orders and many congratulations messages about the new site. I was obviously delighted but there was unfortunately a glitch in the ordering system and some people found it difficult to place their order. I spent a lot of time on the phone and corresponding with my web guy by email. I cannot praise him enough, he always gets straight to work and sorts things out. I think it is all fixed now but if anyone has any problems PLEASE let me know. It was lucky that one of my customers is an IT consultant and rang me to point out the problem. I suspect the problem had been going for a few days as orders seemed to drop dramatically at the beginning of this week. I was in a bit of a panic at that time as I bought a large number of new spiders and scorpions at the weekend.

Last Sunday was the Portsmouth reptile show. It seemed to be much bigger than last year and was certainly well attended. We arrived at a time when I thought everyone would have gone into the hall but we ended up queuing in the cold for ages. Still I managed to get chatting to an old customer of mine which was nice. There were a surprising number of spiders for sale so out came my shopping list! I spent far more than I had intended and this week has been a bit of a nightmare trying to find somewhere to put everything. I have decided to move my pets indoors. The snakes and geckoes are taking up far too much room in my bug house, I think they should move into my office. If they were indoors I would take the snakes out more. I really love my snakes, it will be the cat, dog and three snakes on my lap watching telly soon. There won't be any room for my hubby. He loves the dog, tolerates the cat but really won't want the snakes cuddling up to him.

There are lots of new features on my website. I really like the fact that people can leave reviews on products. I only have three at the moment but hopefully this number will grow soon. One of the items to gain a five star review is the Bean weevils. I was just about to discontinue these but I can't now! I have had lots of positive feedback about various aspects of the site from the layout to the ease of navigating and ordering. I am still learning, each day I find something that I'm not sure about, so I write a list and then get my hubby or web guy to help me. Over all I am sure it is a huge improvement. I still need to sort out the front page information and in time I intend to add more about the care of individual species. I just need the time, I swear I have never worked so hard in my life as I do these days. I am really glad to be free of the comments box that accompanied orders on my old site. It caused so much hassle and extra work. Nobody seems to miss it, everyone is free to email and ask questions. I am finding more people phoning me recently, this is really good as it is often much easier to discuss things and generally quicker too. My iPhone5 is on order, goodness knows how I will get to grips with it. I have only ever had a Nokia phone but it will be great and most of my family have Smart phones so I will get lots of help. My daughter has an iPhone for work so I'm sure she will be able to show me, especially if she wants any dinner or laundry done!

A couple more things about the website (it is bound to be the main topic of my blog for weeks to come). I haven't used it yet but there is now a facility for schools, universities, zoos and other educational establishments to apply for a 30 day credit account. This means that I can once again accept purchase order numbers. I have been unable to accept payment in this way since my first online shop was set up three years ago so I am really glad to have got this sorted. So far nobody has applied to set up an account but I was sent a whole list of terms from a council for me to sign if I wanted to become a supplier. What? I was very confused, is that not the wrong way around? I thought people were supposed to agree to my terms if they wanted to buy from me? Oh well, we live and learn, I signed it and returned it. I am thinking of going back to accepting cheque and postal orders but I would need to work out a way of doing this. I had to stop this method of payment as I estimated around 80% of people who chose this option never sent the payment and it just meant that stock was held up and a lot of my time was wasted. My regular customers will no doubt have noticed that I now have a lot of products being sold at 99p rather than rounded up to the pound (this seems to sell the item better so 99p it is).

I am still trying to cut down on stick insects, it is slow going. I have reduced the price of most, if not all of the stick insects that I have bred myself but they are selling so slowly. I love stick insects but there is only one of me and my time would clearly be better spent looking after the more sought after creatures. I need to clean out my giant cage of mixed stick insects as there are a number of spiders in there literally eating into my profits! They come in on the bramble and thrive in the heat and humidity of the cage. It is soul destroying spending so much time caring for the stick insects and then finding so many with a leg or two missing due to spider attacks. I am not good at prioritising. I said to a friend recently that I would be better off squashing the stick insects. She was horrified but of course I wouldn't do that. I can't help looking after everything from a four legged stick insect to an ancient male tarantula well past his best! That's why half my life is spent in the bug house and pretty much the other half is spent here in my office.

Halloween was pretty uneventful for me this year. No family party, hubby was on late shift and due to the pouring rain no treat or treat callers. I will just have to eat all the sweets myself.